We went over to Anna and David’s for Christmas Day dinner. And another batch of Dave’s amazing Trinidadian rum punch.
Daaaaamn. I guess I do like rum. Merry Christmas!
Did someone say more rum punch?
Category Archives: Friends & Family
I guess 7:15 wasn’t too bad.
Tom and I had both taken Tylenol PM so we were both zonked in the morning when the kids came in together at 7:15 with a loud MERRY CHRISTMAS and hopped in bed with us! We always leave their phones outside their doors so they can let us sleep longer but apparently 30 minutes was all they could handle!
I must be slacking on my old age because I didn’t take any pictures! But they started with their stockings and were thrilled to find a ton of Lego Minifigure packs so they started building those right away! Before we knew it, this is what the room looked like (and I think this is after one mid-opening cleaning).
Santa brought the kids a few things they asked for so they were thrilled—Owen got a game for his computer (he was super sneaky and actually installed it on the computer!) and some video game cash and Katie got some dolls she asked for.
Katie was proud of her wrapping job. And she knows me…it was a stemless wineglass that said BEST MOM EVER.
Then we video chatted with both sets of grandparents AND had a zoom call with the Schwalmlettes. (We might have been a little unprepared since we were thinking it was noon our time. But it was noon Eastern. I am never going to get used to being CST.)
Christmas Eve with our bubble!
If I haven’t mentioned it, we have created a bubble with our good friends Anna and David. Each family quarantined for two weeks and we always wear masks when we are with anyone outside our bubble—and even try to avoid prolonged visits with anyone outside the bubble. So we do hang out with each other a lot.
We usually share Hello Fresh dinners but decided to splurge tonight on not one, not two, but three orders of our favorite octopus appetizer from our favorite restaurant (Primo) and a homemade charcuterie board. That was seriously all Tom, Anna, David, and I wanted. Easy peasy.
We didn’t take one single picture of our amazing dinner, but it was delicious. We might also have drank an entire batch of Dave’s amazing rum punch and watched Christmas Chronicles with the kids. I’m not naming names but someone fell asleep.
Then we got ready for Santa!
We left out Girl Scout cookies because Katie texted Santa and asked if he liked them and gave him a choice and he picked the chocolate and peanut butter ones. The candy cane is for the reindeer.
I absolutely love the letters both kids left for Santa. Owen thanked him for being awesome (and gave him a spot for a Robux code) and Katie wanted Santa to write his name.
And this was where Maggie was. Maybe sneakily waiting for Santa, too?
My Christmas Eve look(s)!
I started with Pink Champagne lips and it looked okay…but that color is really just too light for me.
So since I am trying to redo ALLLL my color collage photos, I tried two other colors. My favorite is the Sheer Berry.
But check this out. I had Anna try the same Pink Champagne color and look at how different it looks! That’s simply due to the different color of our lips—hers are much more pigmented then mine!
Me and my bestie.
Cookie decorating!
We haven’t done cookie decorating because I just don’t have the patience. Buuuuut Anna wanted to do it so we tried. And even though there was a bit of a shaky start…Katie was actually pretty good at the whole thing. I was impressed. Owen doesn’t like sugar cookies so he did like one cookie and that was it. Tom and I even got into it.
Frontera in my own kitchen!
We did a Frontera pickup today from Dwell Social. It’s a bit more prep than just dining at a restaurant, but we didn’t have to drive to Chicago, so it’s a win. This photo is missing most of the main courses but trust me, it was all there.
Short Rib Enchiladas
Six homemade heirloom corn tortillas, each wrapped around braised Creekstone Farms beef short rib, roasted local gold potatoes, tomato-guajillo chile sauce, Samuel’s artisan Jack cheese. Served with black beans and chocolate-pecan pie bars for dessert.
Tacos al Carbon
Wood-grilled Creekstone skirt steak and Gunthorp Farms chicken breast along with everything you need to make fabulous tacos: guacamole, roasted poblano rajas, black beans, classic Gulf-style rice, grilled knob onions, shishito peppers, two salsas and handmade tortillas with heirloom corn from Oaxaca, Mexico. Finish off with Mexican vanilla flan for a sweet ending.
Guacamole and Chips
Mashed Michoacán avocados, local Mighty Vine tomato, serrano chile, cilantro, lime. House-made tortillas chips served with red three chile salsa & green roasted tomatillo salsa.
Queso Fundido
Samuel’s artisanal Jack cheese, garlicky roasted peppers, and homemade chorizo served with heirloom corn tortillas.
BAR SÓTANO CRISPY TLAYUDA (TOSTADA) STARTERS
Six crispy Oaxacan tlayudas (rustic tostadas) with 2 toppings:
- Avocado Mash (luxurious Michoacan avocado, roasted poblano, pomegranate, fresco cheese).
- Local Corn Esquites (serrano chile, epazote, chintextle crema, queso fresco).
Mom Squad Zoom Christmas
Kim Ho Ho Ho’ed everyone today with treats and a #momsquad wine glass for our Secret Santa exchange…
We had a great time but can’t wait to see each other in person again…
I’m gonna need a bigger skirt.
So the problem with my dream 12′ tree is that you need oversize accessories. More ornaments. BIGGER ornaments. A bigger star. A bigger tree skirt. (And this stuff is kinda stupid expensive.) Amazon didn’t have much in the way of 72″ tree skirts (typical ones are 48″) so I called on my friends to help me. And they came through. After we parsed out the $200 skirts, this is what I ended up ordering for $59! Yay!
More Christmas up in here!
This isn’t the best pic, but you can see my new Hobby Lobby clearance trees and reindeer above the TV. And the stockings hanging below the TV on hooks Anna gave us since they can’t use them.
I still need to figure out what to do on the topmost shelf…it looks odd to have the regular glass jars, candles, and rooster up there with Christmas all around…so stay tuned.
The tree that friends built.
I wasn’t sure what color scheme I wanted to do with my tree. My friend Britt has a gorgeous red/gold/silver tree that I thought about trying to duplicate…
…but when I went to Hobby Lobby with Anna (to get some clearance Christmas decorations and (hopefully) ornaments) they had nothing with color that I liked. I did get a few generic items like silver deer heads and neutral burlap balls—as a start.
And then.
Anna said she had a whole bucket of unbreakable purple ornaments I could have. I had thought about purple but didn’t really want a PURRRPLE tree. But as soon as she showed them to me I knew they were perfect. They are in the dusty lilac plum family.
So now I need to find some bigger ornaments in those colors. And get some ribbon (right now we’re just testing it out with a few lengths Anna had on hand). And maybe add some snowflakes or icicles…
Busted!
Parenting is always an adventure!
Tonight Tom and I were going to bed about 10:30 and I heard voices upstairs. What? Tom snuck up and caught Katie FaceTiming with Gramma Jean! GRRR! She knows devices aren’t allowed at night. She knows her bedtime. (That said, it was cute but she’s such a stinker to think she can get away with it. On a school night no less. When she knows she’s not really even supposed to have her device.)
I called Gramma immediately and she just told me yes they were talking and Katie was helping her with something on the iPad. I wasn’t mad at my mom for sure but just frustrated with Katie. Neither kid makes good decisions when it comes to technology and Tom and I are at our limits. (I don’t think I mentioned this, but about two weeks ago Katie lost her devices for an indeterminate amount of time because she downloaded TikTok and Instagram on her phone!)
Gramma said: Busted! Katie has been calling me on Face Time pretty late in the evening, certainly past her bedtime. Last night she was trying to teach me how to record a video instead of typing. Jen and Tom were downstairs watching TV and then started turning off everything to head to bed. Tom heard some noise and they discovered Katie on her iPad. OOPS. Jen called me immediately and Tom said “gramma is grounded!”
We got my bucket list tree!
I have always wanted a huge Christmas tree! My dad used to get a 2-story tree and I loved it. My cousin gets a 2-story tree and I love it. But we’ve just never had the room for one—and even if we did at one point…the next house we moved to might not fit it. So when we found our forever house and it has super tall ceilings, I knew what was going to happen. But of course I didn’t want to spend the $900 Costco was asking for their 14′ tree, so I figured I would wait until the clearance sales after the holidays and see what deals I could get.
Well…Costco was out of trees by mid-November so there would be no discount Costco tree. Sam’s Club was even out of them! So I resigned myself to probably paying full price next year.
And then Tom and I ran into Sam’s this morning and while we were browsing…I saw my 12′ slim tree on clearance for $259! WHAAAAAT?!?! Yes, please!
And the best part? Dad and Linda had wanted to get us a housewarming present and we hadn’t really been able to think of anything perfect…so the tree was our gift! It’s soooo perfect!!!
I don’t have any decorations for it but those will come with further clearance sales!!
ADDENDUM: Two days later Anna was at Sam’s Club and told me it was reduced even more so I went back and got $100 credited!
Avoiding cleaning her room.
Mom, take a picture of me in this hat from Grannie.
From me to New Zealand!
FYI this is what an order looks like when it’s been building for three months! Kristin lives in New Zealand and consolidates her orders for shipment to a stateside relative’s house! This goes all the way back to my birthday party month!!
Stuff The Turkey | Black Friday | Small Business Saturday | Cyber Monday
I just want to thank everyone who shopped with me this month. I am so very thankful for each and every one of you! When you make a purchase with my SMALL business, it means a lot for my family! And I love spoiling all of my customers, too…giving gifts is my love language.
Kim Kruse, Michelle Galvez, Cheryl Malato, Brianna Powvens, Jannie Louise Sandifer, Kristin Huff, Heidi Leafblad-Habel, Lindsey Mares, Britt Nickelsen, Rebecca Whitley, Ashley Bouchard, Pam Kozu, Stacy Bishop Stark, Anna Bennett Chang-Yen, Ann Balat Gasperini, Rachel Young Wehrle, Jackie Moens, Amber Bookhout Dennis, Leah Waters Cossarek, Suzie Girard Teal, Jami Wallis, Clarencene VanVuuren, and Monique Morrison-Meyer!
Making social distancing work.
This was the closest Britt and I got just for a quick pic!
Back at the house we sat outside across the deck and I was too lazy to actually remove the chair cover and it kept falling down so we joked it was our way to keep distanced.
Late night food delivery!
Friendship means Thanksgiving dinner plate leftovers delivery at 10:30pm because we had deep dish pizza today. (And we had had a game night with a bunch of us!)
Thanksgiving Zoom!
We just finished a 2 1/2 hour Zoomfest with the whole Schwalmlette and Schmittlette family! We visited and played a few trivia games
…and took our family photo.
Pre-Thanksgiving Zoom with friends
When you’re on a cheese party zoom call in the kitchen you have to make do.
Playing some new online collaborative games. Quiplash is my favorite!
I knew my Monday was going too well.
A friend repotted some aloe babies for me. I totally spaced on the drive home and forgot I set it on the center console. I didn’t stop fast, but it was obviously unstable. My poor recently detailed car…
It took about 20 minutes to clean the car and then I did repot it and it’s doing fine.
Park chat
We were Gobbled!
We heard the Ring go off and all of us ignored it because we were sure it was absolutely nothing—again—but then Katie said maybe we were booed again (yeah, right, okay) and ran out to check and I’ll be damned. We were Gobbled!
And here’s the stash from all earlier Boos!
Surprise! Another Boo!
Okay this is getting crazy. But oh my gosh we are having so much fun with this. Now the deliveries are trying to be super sneaky to avoid the cameras (most of us have Ring doorbells). So this time, I didn’t even know I had one—everyone was showing pics of their baskets and I didn’t see one on the porch so I thought okay maybe I missed being in this round (no biggie). And then I went outside and found this in front of the garage door!
An evening makeup sesh.
When your husband is out playing poker with the boys, you invite your bestie over to play in makeup. (I am sure the kids are still alive downstairs somewhere.) And then since we had our make up freshly done at 8 o’clock we went out to Marshalls.
We got Boo’ed again!
But this time we know it was one of our neighborhood mom group… And this isn’t my basket but someone else’s because my kids tore into ours so fast I couldn’t get a picture. At least they handed me the wine.
We got Boo’ed!
So one night a few days ago the doorbell rang and we didn’t think much of it since Amazon always rings the bell and we get lots of deliveries. But the kids usually run out to see. Today Katie did and said she saw a kid running away—but he left a bag of Halloween goodies with a note that we had to pass it on! We looked at our camera feed and saw the kid but we have no idea who it is! Well the kids were super excited for TREATS! CANDY! SLIME! and definitely wanted to Boo other people.
Thankfully Tom stepped up and did it with them because while I did want to be a part of the neighborhood, I didn’t really want to do all of it. He took them shopping. He supervised the building of the baskets. My contribution was printing out the instruction. Then Tom took them to the houses where they successfully delivered the baskets without being seen!
I rocked Britt’s makeup world!
So today we did a thing. Britt is a busy mom of two littles and came to me bare-faced hating her skin…and left with such a HUGE smile on her face and LOVING her new easy look in colors she never would have picked. New to her? Pink shadow. Darker pink lips. Filled in brows. It was so exciting watching her discover how great she looked in these products and the awe she experienced looking at herself. And she was amazed how great they worked compared to her $$$ products.
P.S. I kinda hate how amazing her lashes look and I will now be attempting to apply my own mascara exactly like she did because wowza.
P.P.S. Yes we forgot a before photo. 😣
A long day’s drive for dad’s tools.
The running joke for countless years has been that Tom was only in this marriage for my dad’s tools. Well, the time has finally come…my dad agreed to give up some of his tools that he just doesn’t use anymore.
So Tom and David drove up to the U.P. with a trailer (and David’s truck) to haul everything back. David had never been up there before so of course Tom had to take him up Brockway Mountain.
They were only there for about an hour and a half siteseeing and loading and then it was back home in the same day! They left at 5a and got home shortly after 10p!
Anna and I did our makeup together today!
And then a strange yet cool photo that happened accidentally when trying to put together a collage.
